Kids in the Corridor.

Week 4 with CVA brought me to the Atherton Tableland, a plateau area southwest of Cairns.  This area once was a hotbed for volcanic activity, which lead to the prized rich soils it has today.  Over a hundred years ago, Europeans began to transform the landscape for farming.  They turned what was continuous forest into a rural landscape.  Currently, beef and dairy farming are the biggest industry.  The property where we are staying is actually on an operating beef farm.  I can say that I never imagined myself staying on a beef farm…

We are volunteering at the Lake Barrine Nursery.  The owners (an enthusiastic wife and husband) purchased the run down beef farm that borders the World Heritage listed National Park.  Despite some conflicting practices, I think they have some good intentions.  The nursery supports the plants used for revegetation in the area.  A revegetation project created the Donaghy’s Wildlife Corridor which connects (allows for animal passage) two virgin rainforest areas, the World Heritage Gadgarra Forest and the World Heritage listed Lake Barrine National Park.  Wildlife corridors help maintain the biodiversity of species in the rainforest (which is threatened by fragmentation); they also improve land degradation (less erosion) and protect water quality.

This first photo shows the farm land, the whitish cottage where we stayed, the corridor connecting to the rainforest in the back, and the rainclouds.  Glad we were not in tents this week!

Work at the actual nursery includes tasks such as washing pots (probably everyone’s least favorite), mixing up the different types of soils, preparing the seeds, planting the seeds into beds, transferring seedlings into individual pots, weeding, and building infrastructure (e.g., creating shade cover for the growing plants).  My first task at the nursery was nut cracking.  Many rainforest plants rely on birds (and other animals) to eat their fruit in order to spread the seeds.  When the seeds pass through their stomachs, they are exposed to acid.  This acid burning helps break down the hard outer coatings (for a longer shelf life), preparing them for germination after they pass through the animal.  Some of the seeds are rather large and, therefore, might only have been eaten by the cassowaries, an endangered large flightless bird.  In order to help along this process without swallowing the seeds ourselves, one method is to crack open the hard shell with a vice.  When cracked, the seeds should begin to grow once exposed to soil and moisture.  I cracked hundreds of nuts with the vice.

We also have to collect native seeds to use in the nursery.  In one afternoon adventure, we gathered a few thousand seeds from seven different plant species.  The fruits and seeds are very colorful and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Considering that revegetation projects can take tens of thousands of plants, lots of seeds are needed.  During this adventure, I was attacked by small brown leeches.  I don’t know where they came from (maybe it was raining leeches), but I found almost 20 on my clothing or skin (some were attached).  I also don’t know why there are far more leeches on me than anyone else… perhaps it is some form of payback as mosquitoes (“mozzies”) don’t bother me as much as others.

Of course, we also planted some of the nursery plants in the new revegetation area and sown some seeds there too.  It was raining during our first round of planting; hopefully, we are building the forest to go along with that rain.

Next week, I will be returning to the Tablelands to do more work on the corridors.  Hopefully, I will see more of the wildlife benefiting from these corridors, and I'll post again.